This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

A long time ago, and for a very brief period, I produced the last episodes of a CBC Radio program called The Food Show; it aired on Sunday mornings at 8:30 a.m. and it had a terrific and loyal following. Its absence from the airwaves remains a loss, since food had done nothing but increase in importance over the past 25 years.

The main subject matter of The Food Show was not jamming pie down your cake-hole; it was food aid, food trade, food production and regulation, food as a weapon of war and food as an instrument of policy; only now and then was it was about pie.

The show was a casualty of budget cuts and while that was not the only reason I quit the CBC, the cancellation of the show played a big role in my departure. An aside: after I quit, I turned myself into a print journalist; see: ill wind; no good, the blowing of.

One of the serious issues we tackled in the last days of the program was the use of bovine somatotropin, or BST. What’s that? It is a growth hormone given to dairy cows to trick them into producing more milk.

And I pause now to remind you that when you’re talking about BST, you’re talking about companies such as Monsanto, Eli Lilly, Upjohn, and the charmingly named American Cyanamid.

Article Continued Below

The stress produced by the hormonal trickery of cattle is not just unnatural, it is a leading cause of mastitis, a painful condition of the udder. Spoiler alert: the symptoms of mastitis include watery milk, or milk with flakes or clots or pus.

Mastitis is treated with antibiotics.

We avoid the problem altogether in Canada because we banned the use of BST in Canadian dairy production, and we’re not the only ones; the pure milk, happy cow club includes Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and the countries of the European Union.

But there is now a threat to the purity of the milk on Canadian shelves, and eventually to the purity of all products on the dairy aisle, including butter, yogurt and cheese. Why?

Because if the Trans-Pacific Partnership goes through, we will be required to open 3.25 per cent of our dairy market to American milk.

Oh, well, you say, 3.25 per cent is not so much; artificial hormones are no different from natural ones; and the Americans reject any shipment of farmed milk found containing antibiotic residue.

Oh well, I say in reply to you, 3.25 per cent is the thin edge of the trade wedge; the use of hormones in food production is a vexing complexity; Americans do not test for all the possible antibiotics in the milk supply; but worse than all of the above is that, earlier this year, banned antibiotics were found in a small sample of milk taken from American shelves.

My point is that when you pin your hopes on the regulation and inspection of another country whose standards are weaker than your own, then you’re in for trouble somewhere down the line.

If we sign the TPP as it apparently stands, then we will have no choice: our national standards, and our system of regulation and inspection, will be trumped by the terms of the deal.

And then the only emperor will be the emperor of antibiotic ice cream, and we can all whip, in kitchen cups, concupiscent curds. That’s a gloss on the poet Wallace Stevens. You could look it up.

But you could also consider this question, and it’s what I’ve been leading up to:

If the big multinational corporations can induce governments to sign sovereignty-destroying, regulation-degrading trade agreements, then why don’t we, all of us — farmers, consumer groups, and labour unions — get together and rise up as one in defence of our own interests?

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com